LL.M. Recommended Foreign Films

Russia

When a Russian youth is put on trial for the murder of his adoptive father, it's up to a room full of jurors divided by racism and prejudice to determine the boy's ultimate fate in director Nikita Mikhalkov's loose remake of Reginald Rose's 12 Angry Men. Consigned to a makeshift jury room, one by one each man takes center stage to confront, connect, and confess while the accused awaits a verdict and revisits his heartbreaking journey through war in flashbacks.

Director Vladimir Khotinenko takes the helm for this historical drama set during the Polish-Muscovite War, and exploring the events that followed the legendary massacre of Tsar Boris Godunov and his family. As Russia is thrown into disorder and Moscow sinks into lawlessness, Prince Pozharsky attempts to regain control and the enormous Polish and Swedish armies ponder the possibility of conquering the troubled nation.

In traditional Soviet history books and popular opinion, early 20th century war admiral Aleksandr Kolchak (1874-1920), a crusader against the Bolsheviks, went down as a brutal, homicidal, and nearly psychotic tyrant who massacred untoward numbers of people. But that interpretation gets dramatically rewritten by this lavish, sweeping chronicle produced at the height of a resurgence in Russian nationalism during the early 21st century. Here, as played by Konstantin Khabensky, Kolchak emerges as an admirable and commendable battle hero.

Set in Moscow during the time of Stalin, several story-lines are intertwined. A writer (the Master) has produced a manuscript of a play about Pontius Pilate. It appears that government agents are intent on suppressing the manuscript. Paranoia sets in as the Master believes that not only the Devil himself is after him, but that his assistant Margarita is conspiring with the forces of evil.

Anatoly, a man of faith who lives a Spartan existence in a tumble-down shack near a monastery, uses his gifts in disturbing ways in this drama infused with the supernatural. While the staff at the monastery prefer not to acknowledge it, Anatoly has developed an unusual reputation in the village -- it's believed he has a gift of prophecy and can heal through faith, but while Anatoly is willing to use these talents, he will only do so for those who are willing to renounce all their worldly possessions and give their lives to the Lord.

Russian filmmaker Andrei Zvyagintsev makes his feature-film debut with the bleak psychological drama, The Return. Younger brother Ivan and older brother Andrei live in a small town with their mother. One summer, the brothers are surprised by the arrival of their long-lost absent father. Although the boys only know him from an old photograph, he still orders them to accompany him on a fishing trip. The stern father then puts his two sons through a series of endurance tests. Doting Andrei is quick to cooperate, while stubborn Ivan is more reluctant to trust him. After they travel by boat to a deserted island, the father gets even more mysterious.

Spain

Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenabar's first English-language production is a creepy period ghost story. Nicole Kidman stars as Grace, a devoutly religious mother of two ailing children who has moved with her family to a mansion on the English coast while awaiting her husband's return from World War II, though he has been declared missing. When her daughter begins claiming to see ghosts, Grace at first believes her newly arrived family of eccentric servants to be responsible, but chilling events and visions soon lead her to believe that something supernatural is indeed going on.

Thailand

The recipient of the prized Palme d'Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's hypnotic drama tells the haunting story of a Thai man suffering from kidney failure who retreats to the countryside to die in the company of his loved ones. As Uncle Boonmee nears the end of his life, the spirit of his late wife returns to guide him into the unknown, and his estranged son reappears in the form of a jungle spirit. Later, the ailing man leads his family on a journey to a hilltop cave where he first came into this world.

Ukraine

Fedor Bondarchuk, the son of noted Russian filmmaker Sergei Bondarchuk, debuts as a director with the harrowing and relentless military drama, 9th Company, set between 1988 and 1989 at the tail end of the U.S.S.R. Afghani war. Young Soviet Army recruits are sent from boot camp directly into the war, but nothing can begin to prepare them for the brutal devastation into which they are plunged, or the relentless tide of slaughter that scatters thousands of Soviet victims in its wake.

Along with Tarkovsky and Dovzhenko, Sergei Paradjanov is one of the most important Soviet directors of last century. Paradjanov, who was periodically jailed and exiled because of his work, stunned world audiences in 1964 with his Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors, popularly known as the Romeo and Juliet of the Carpathians. The film is set among the Hutsul people of the Western Ukraine, an isolated ethnic group who live in the upper reaches of the mountain range. Their lives take place within a harsh environment and an ornate cultural system little changed since the 18th century.

As helmed by director Vladimir Bortko, this Russian-language saga dramatizes the life and experiences of Taras Bulba, a 16th century Cossack leader from Ukraine. Bulba spends his days fighting the Poles, who are oppressing the Ukrainians of the day, and makes his most calculating move by sending his son to study in Poland, so that the boy can learn the ways of the oppressing country. Once there, however, the boy promptly falls in love with a Polish noblewoman. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Cossacks must fiercely stand their ground as Polish armies close in.

Uruguay

Uruguayan directors César Chalone and Enrique Fernández co-helm this nutty Spanish-language farce . The film unfolds in 1988, during Pope John Paul II's visit to Uruguay. While dozens of economically struggling locals devise plans to turn a buck from the arrival of the papal father -- such as baking cakes and wrapping chorizo sausages -- only one concocts a scheme to earn a fortune from defecation.

Lonely Jacobo Koller is the owner of a struggling sock company. His brother is coming to visit, and he doesn't want him to know that he isn't married, so he asks Marta to pretend that she is his wife and, surprisingly, she says yes.